Make Your Own Luck.

Personal Finance - Personal Responsibility - Self-reliance

Face up to debt and feel better

Having debts that you try to ignore is not a healthy way to live your life. By ignoring your debts, they’re never going to magically disappear, and the problems that they can cause you will simply become worse.

Many people who are in debt find it hard to sleep at night because of the guilt associated with having debts. This in turn makes it difficult to be productive in the daytime and can put different areas of your life under pressure. It may make your job unsafe, it may cause damage to your relationship with your partner or other family members. Being in debt and not addressing it can also affect your health, as your stress could trigger illness.

So, by far the best approach to debt is to do something proactive to start working your way free of it. Even the smallest steps in the right direction will begin to make a difference, and the effects can be cumulative and gather pace as you find different ways to fight back and pay off the debt. You can work toward a devry associates in accounting and not only help yourself with debt, but help others in the future with their debt.

A very simple mantra to remember is to spend less than you earn. Now, while this may be easy to say, it’s a lot harder to actually live by. But take a good long look at your household income and expenditure and you’re bound to be able to find some ways to cut spending. Start off by checking that you have the best available tariffs on essentials like electricity and gas, and that you are not paying more than you need to for insurance – on your car, house or pets! Next, look at your spending on food. If you have debt you want to get free of, don’t eat out and start shopping at a cheaper supermarket chain. Buy ingredients and prepare your own meals rather than buying them in all the time. Forego holidays and weekend trips until you feel that you have earned them by clearing some of your debt. Any surplus that you manage to put by at the end of the month should go into a debt clearance fund, and you can start paying back what you owe.

For some people the DIY approach to debt may not be sufficient, and although all the budgeting and saving on expenditure will still help, you may need professional assistance for paying off a serious level of debt. In the UK, people with debts of more than £10,000 owing to three different creditors or more may qualify to enter into an IVA (Individual Voluntary Arrangement). This is a little like bankruptcy, but a less extreme course of action as it does not put your assets, such as your home, at risk. In the states, debt management companies will guide you through the different options available, including debt negotiation, debt settlement and debt consolidation. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages, and you shouldn’t enter into an agreement with a debt management company without doing serious research, but it may be the best way forward if you can’t seem to make any progress on clearing your debts alone.